Books

[Alan_Noonan_10]

Just finished the third of the Terra Alta novels by Javier Cercas (translated from Spanish).

The series covers the exploits of Melchor Marin who is purported to be the policeman killer of the 4 Islamists in the Catalonian town of Cambrils after the 4 had perpetrated a terrorist attack, running down a number of pedestrians (including an Australian toddler) in La Rambla in Barcelona. It had originally been planned to be a bomb attack but the cell leader blew himself up the night before, and the other improvised. They escaped to the southern town of Cambrils where Melchor happened upon them, when returning from a police mission to Murcia, and killed them.

The incident really happened but Melchor is fictional. He gets assigned to anywhere he wants and he chooses Gandesa, a town in Terra Alta, the site of a major battle in the last months of the Spanish Civil War as Franco’s forces approached Barcelona, the last Republican stronghold.

Anyhow, it’s now 2034, with no fanciful futuristic tales, and Melchor’s daughter, Cosette, has found out how her mother died, murdered as a result of Melchor’s obstinacy in not dropping a case, and is decidedly unhappy with him. She heads to Pollença on the island of Mallorca and is seriously abused in an Epstein-like mansion and becomes seriously depressed. Melchor meets a guy in Pollença who knows that there a video record of the abuse in the highly secure mansion. He convinces Melchor that on the night of the Champions League final between Real and Barça they can enter the complex and retrieve the hard drives. He just has to convince 9 others to join him, mainly ex-police or current police.

Very Epsteinian as was S2Ep3 of the reboot of Van Der Valk on iView.

I don’t really expect anyone else to embark on this series, but it’s so enjoyable to read European versions of these adventures rather than British or particularly American over-sensationalistic.

A documentary on the terrorist attack and the killing at Cambrils is in a documentary on Netflix, 800 Metros, the distance covered by the van as it killed people. That one is in Spanish, or sub-titled or dubbed.

Edit: just looked up Cercas on Spanish Wikipedia and saw that they’ve made a TV series of the first book and first episode dropped in Spain LAST FRIDAY. Series named Terra Alta.

[Alan_Noonan_10]

A Disappearing Act, by Jo Dixon, a Tasmanian writer. Her third book after A House of Now and Then and A Shadow at the Door.

Four former roommates in Melbourne join up at a house south of Hobart 25 years later. It comes as Marnie Elliott, a successful author, is returning from London as a damaging story is about to come out about her, to join her old friends Sarah, Poppy and Xanthea.

Shortly after arriving, Poppy drops her off at the beginning of a bushwalking path and Marnie is never seen again.

What is it? Is she lost in wild country, has she killed herself because of the impending disgrace, is she murdered or has she just legged it?

All three women have a strong history with her, and mysterious stories of all pop up.

Well worth a read.

[Alan_Noonan_10]

The Farm by Jessica Mansour-Nehra

Very Gothic novel set between the Blue Mountains and Bathurst

James and Leila are a professional Sydney couple, heading for forty and keen to start a family, but Leila has a painful miscarriage and subsequent painful clean-up. To help her recover, James takes her to his parents’ farm where she finds herself seeing things and smelling things. Is James just gaslighting her? Most of the time, she’s only accompanied by the family dog, and continuously afflicted by her memories of her late mother..

Very, very gothic but the book is an easy read. Could trigger people with similar experiences.

Third book in the Jesse Redpath series by Adrian Hyland, The Redline

Jesse Redpath is an acting sergeant in the Healesville/St Andrews area, recently joined VicPol after a stint in the NT Police force. At the beginning of the book, a local sergeant is murdered and Jesse sets off in pursuit. I hadn’t heard of Hyland before but this is a good read if you like police procedurals, especially those near Melbourne. I’ve picked up his first on Kindle and second on Audible.

The second book is The Wiregrass where Jesse gets into a relationship with a guy with a lot of issues. She saves a woman from a raging river during a massive storm and runs into an ex-cop called Nash. Another guy has been found in a truck, upon which a tree has fallen, killing him. She finds suspicious marks making her think he’s been murdered. But anyway, she settles into a chat with Nash, one thing leads to another, and she and Nash settle into nice little session when the door of his hut and the local cop shop barges in, catching her naked and in flagrante, and arrests Nash for the murder.

Some good religious cult action. Pretty good read.

Finished up with Canticle Creek, the first in the series, where Jesse moves from the Territory to the Yarra Valley to understand why a young friend of hers has been found to have murdered a girl. Sets a lot of scenes for later.

And now Dark Desert Road by Tim Ayliffe. This one flies through. Identical twin sisters, Kit and Billie, have taken different paths. Kit is a cop, and Billie, influenced by her war criminal father, has got involved with sov-cit fundamentalist Christians in the US and moved back to the Riverina. Kit goes searching for Billie and trouble follows.

[wimmera1]

I couldn’t find the swap/trade whatever thread, so…

Doing a book cull.
Blitzers get first dibs. Free to pick up.

[wimmera1]

[Alan_Noonan_10]

I already have copies of all yours whose genres i read. And 3 bags of books went to Lifeline yesterday.

Thanks anyway.

[Alan_Noonan_10]

Hot Ground by Lisa Ellery, her second book.

Jessy Parkin has just been posted to Kalgoorlie to get her out of Perth while an appeal of a conviction is going on.

She’s pestered by a woman who believes her father was murdered out in the goldfields when pegging out a claim, All fairly complex but the story rattles along.

It’s a sequel to Private Prosecution which I’ve lined up on Audible.

[Humble_Minion]

I’d be interested in some of the Anne Rice if you’re looking to get rid of it @wimmera1

Also, good idea for a post. I’ll do the same in this thread next time i do a big bookshelf cul…

[wimmera1]

No worries, they’re still in the boot.

[Shahid_Afridi]

I got the Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K Jemisin for Xmas and read them back-to-back-to-back. I absolutely loved them and couldn’t put them down, the story really captured me. They are quite dark (there some beautiful moments, though) so might not be for everyone.

My first taste of her writing and will be seeking out her Inheritance trilogy.

[Humble_Minion]

I read the first two Inheritance books waaaay back in the day right after they came out, and I bounced off them pretty hard. Just not my thing, though I wonder if they’re about due for a rerelease? The romance aspects of them would fit seamlessly into current fantasy publishing trends - the whole romantasy aspect.

Fifth Season won every fantasy fiction award imaginable when it first came out. I think each book won a Hugo as it came out, and eventually they changed the Hugo rules to have a ‘series’ category to avoid that sort of monopolisation again in future and to give someone else a go. I’ve only read the first one there. I didn’t hate it or anything, it just didn’t grab me. I’ve been meaning for ages to give it a reread to see if I missed something there.

[Alan_Noonan_10]

Just finished The Hollow Girl by Lynn Yeowart.

Pretty gritty stuff set at a home for pregnant girls in Horsham, set in 1961 when the main girl is sent there and 1973 where a few other nurses are murdered.

[SillyBilly]

Jeez G.R.R Martin is a bit precious isn’t he? Didnt like the comments and questions around letting someone finish the Song of Ice and Fire series if he passes before he gets them done.

Dude you have been writing Winds of Winter for 14 years! Get it done and stop procrastinating. He says he has to write more on these spin off… why? Focus on the one series FFS. You say it’s a priority to get done but you’re sometimes not in the mood. Mate… 14 years to finish one book which is 3 years and you havent made much progress and keep re-writing or changing chapters so your page count hasnt moved.

At 77 there is a very real possibility he wont complete the last 2 books with all the side projects he has been doing:

• Working on the HBO adaptations
• side books (Dunk and Egg and Fire and Blood).
• Video Game story projects that he supports

[Shahid_Afridi]

Incredible book! Really sad, but also extremely beautiful. Water, the epic of Gilgamesh, man’s cruelty, oppression, genocide, the good and bad of ordinary people. This one has left a mark on me. I highly recommend it.

[Benny40]

Brandon Sanderson just signed a deal with Apple TV to make a movie of Mistborn and a tv series of Stormlight. Sanderson will write the scripts and have veto control of all production decisions. More power than JK Rowling and GRR Martin had.

Good on him. Hope it goes well.

[dingus]

Hopefully more successful than when he coached the Crom.

[swoodley]

I read a lot of sci fi/fantasy novels and really liked how Sanderson finished off The Wheel of Time series.

Based on that, I read Mistborn…I found it incredibly slow and never bothered with any of the follow ups.

[bobo]

Pretty much my experience too, I found it a breath of fresh air when he took over from Jordan after his dire last books but just plodded through his own works that I read.

That said, if it gets done well I’ll probably watch. And I hope the fans get what they are hoping for. Fantasy done well is to be treasured.

[Yossarian]

@SillyBilly

Jeez G.R.R Martin is a bit precious isn’t he? Didnt like the comments and questions around letting someone finish the Song of Ice and Fire series if he passes before he gets them done.

Dude you have been writing Winds of Winter for 14 years! Get it done and stop procrastinating. He says he has to write more on these spin off… why? Focus on the one series FFS. You say it’s a priority to get done but you’re sometimes not in the mood. Mate… 14 years to finish one book which is 3 years and you havent made much progress and keep re-writing or changing chapters so your page count hasnt moved.

At 77 there is a very real possibility he wont complete the last 2 books with all the side projects he has been doing:

• Working on the HBO adaptations
• side books (Dunk and Egg and Fire and Blood).
• Video Game story projects that he supports

I was reading an article about the series and George ending it and the gist of it was he will never finish it and someone else will because Martin doesn’t know how to close a story arc. The series is littered with story arcs that just end because a character is killed off because, you know, gritty realism. And if he cant conclude arcs in the journey, so how could he conclude the series as a whole?

[Shahid_Afridi]

Encouraged by my love of the Broken Earth series, I decided to give this one a go, but Jemisin didn’t grab me this time. I didn’t like this at all and it was a DNF. Oh well, I’ve had a good run lately and I guess I was due for a stinker.